The Ouaddai region only has been welcoming more than 443K of the 628K Sudan refugees (UN data from July 2024) who fled Darfur region since April 2023. While about 200k people live in and continue to arrive to Adré transit site located right at the border with Sudan ; about 200k other have been relocated in 5 different newly created formal camp (Aboutengue, Metche, Alacha, Arkoum and Dougi) or in new extensions of formerly existing camps (as Farchana) which are located much further away from the border, are supposed to better match with humanitarian standards and provide all the necessary services.

In all these camps, people are almost exclusively relying on humanitarian organisations to meet their most basic needs, including to receive food. Nonetheless, due to the global poor and unsustainable funding of the response (in addition of supply difficulties due to the rainy season), the main food distributing organisations working here had to reduce their rations little by little over the past few months, both in quantity and in diversity. In Aboutengue camp for examples, the last distribution that happened end of July, only consisted in sorghum and oil.
The situation in other camps is similar. In Metche, two hours from Adré, many refugees survive on just one meal a day. While food distributions have occurred in Metche, Alacha, and Arkoum, the main concern is the low-calorie intake in these portions. The Inpatient Therapeutic Feeding Centre (ITFC) at our Metche hospital is the busiest unit, with increasing admissions of malnourished children. From January to August, the number of severely malnourished children with complications from Alacha and Arkoum has risen.
Even in Adré informal transit camp, the presence of a local market and a few livelihood opportunities offers families alternative ways to access food. However, the situation is much more difficult in the formal camps, which are often built in remote areas where these alternatives don't exist. In fact, testimonies collected by MSF in Adré camp mentioned that some people were returning from the formal camps for this reason. In Aboutengue, our latest observations show that about 25% of the shelters were empty, supposedly because many people would rather work in the fields to feed their families.